


her lodestone

by anabel



Series: some fragment of a song [2]
Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: After the Happy Ending, Cunnilingus, Engaged Couple, F/M, Premarital Sex, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28105398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: They have waited years to be together, and a few more weeks may be too long.
Relationships: Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth
Series: some fragment of a song [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088135
Comments: 30
Kudos: 163
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	her lodestone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kayromantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayromantic/gifts).



“Anne,” Frederick says, his voice low and his eyes burning.

The first time they were engaged, they were little more than boy and girl together. They had been so full of joy and high spirits, so blissful in their happiness that short halcyon summer; they stole kisses under trees, and ran laughing together through the fields. Their engagement lasted only weeks, and when Anne looks back, it feels almost as if it happened to another woman. She can feel Frederick’s kiss on her lips and hear his extravagantly reckless vows of eternal love, can feel the bright shimmer of her heart and hear her voice in unshadowed youthful certainty. 

They are not boy and girl now.

“If you will it,” Frederick says, his arms around her as if he is loath to ever let her go, “I shall not ask anything of you until I give you my name.”

“You could not ask anything of me I would be unwilling to surrender,” Anne says, sure and steady. She touches the curve of his jaw, so beloved, and for so long forbidden to her. 

She has often wished, in the silence of her cold lonely bed, that she had more warmth in her memories than a few playful kisses. She does not intend, now that Frederick is returned to her, to waste any time addressing the lack.

Frederick breathes harshly, holding her as if she is precious glass. “You unman me with the thought.”

“I do not wish to unman you,” she says, and presses her lips to the swell of his throat.

“Do that and you will be a wife afore the banns are said,” he warns her, his voice catching.

“Frederick,” she says, and meets his eyes square. “I hold myself a wife already.”

Frederick mutters a word that may be profane in a language he has learned on his travels, and kisses her fast and hot, harder than he has ever done yet. Anne raises herself on her toes and slides an arm around the back of his neck, pressing herself bodily against him and sliding her tongue against his. This is no youthful salute, but the passion of a woman beloved; and the way his hand clenches in her dress, the iron feel of his body against hers, the biting urgency of his kiss, tells her he feels it as much as she.

“Damme,” he says, pulling himself away from her. “I have vowed to myself to bring you to the altar a maid, but –”

Anne swallows. His frankness makes her flush, and her stomach turn over. She feels as if her skin is too small for her body.

“There is –” He breaks off again. His hair is delightfully disturbed; she has done that, Anne thinks with a thrill. If anyone were to see him, they would know exactly what he has been doing.

“There is what?” she says. She has not loosed her grip on his neck. Now she tightens her elbow, drawing him back down to her. “If you would make me a wife, Frederick, I have been ready these seven years gone.”

He swears again, in Malay or French or Hindustani, she hardly knows. “You will be the death of me.”

“You will be my husband,” Anne says, “for the rest of my life,” and kisses him.

Frederick picks her up then, carries her across the room as if she weighs no more than a child. His arms are secure around her, touching her in places no man has; she tucks her face into the curve of his neck, and smiles. When he lays her into his bed, she leans back among the covers and looks up at him, feeling completely abandoned and wanton, and utterly, blissfully happy.

“Wife,” he says, and his smile blinds her.

They are three weeks from their wedding. Should he get a child on her today, it will be born not _too_ over-early; everyone knows first children tend to come earlier than later children, after all. Anne thinks of the idea of it, thinks of carrying Frederick’s babe, and flushes all over, head to toe. She is not afraid of what is to come: she holds out her hands to Frederick, and he kneels at her feet, down among the covers.

“There is something I have learned on my travels,” he says now, and his smile has turned almost mischievous, with something in its edge that makes her breath come the faster. “If you will trust me.”

“I trust you with my life.”

The smile grows. “But do you trust me with your virtue?”

She considers. “I scarce know what you may have discovered, sailing the ocean blue. I daresay my imagination could stretch to some lengths. I trust to your care for me, that you will not take me somewhere entirely indecent. Or, that is,” she amends hastily, “to somewhere entirely indecent I do not wish to go.”

He kisses her knee, sweet and affectionate. Her breath catches; she has not thought of her knee as a place that could be kissed, but even through the cloth of her gown she feels the heat of his mouth.

“I will bring you to the altar a maid, Anne Elliot,” he says, “and our child will be a wedding-night babe.”

Anne cannot help but feel her heart sink. Three weeks is a long time to wait; after so many long years without hope, these last days are interminable. “Oh,” she says, small. “You will not change your mind?”

“ _No_ ,” he says, ruining his vehemence by laughing. “But I will make you a maiden wife before then, for we have been too long denied, you and I.”

Anne does not see what he can mean. She raises herself on her elbows and says, “I wish you would stop speaking _Parsee_ ” – but her playful complaint comes to an abrupt end when he picks her foot up from the bed and presses a kiss to the inside of her ankle. Her breath deserts her all at once, and she stares at him with wide eyes.

“Anne,” Frederick says, “trust me,” and pushes her gown up two inches, following it with his lips.

She has never – no man has seen her legs before, let alone _kissed_ them – but he is her affianced husband, and she plans to do much more ere long. She is no girlish innocent, to scream at the thought of a man’s touch. 

Still, this is not something she has thought of before, in the still imaginings of the night, and her breath judders in her ears. He looks up through his lashes, and raises the hem two inches further.

“Frederick,” she says, and touches his hair, her voice a strange creature.

“Anne,” he says, hoarse, and then his mouth is on the inside of her knee, with no gown in between.

She must be aflame – must be thirty shades of vermilion – must be the sunset itself. Her blood is roaring inside her, a strange giddy feeling in her stomach. 

“Trust me, wife,” he says – and puts his hands on her knees, and urges them apart.

Anne realises then, all of a sudden, in a thunderclap of imagination, what he means to do, and cries out. A little wordless cry, her breath coming in gasps; and Frederick looks at her, and smiles, his smile so inutterably tender, so promisingly wicked; and she lays a shaking hand against his cheek, and gives the tiniest of nods.

He ducks his head below her gown, and kisses the inside of her thigh.

She curls her leg around his back, and grips his shoulder with fingers that feel welded out of iron.

If _this_ is what being a wife is, then she cannot imagine why any woman should ever wish her husband to forbear his marital rights. With Frederick under her gown, she feels more alive in this moment than she ever has in her life – save, perhaps, the moment she first knew he still loved her – but then he puts his mouth on her innermost being, and then she _does_ cry out, and he is laughing, and his _tongue_ -

“Frederick,” she begs, not knowing what she is begging for.

He strokes her with hand and mouth, and waves crash against her inner shore, building ever higher and higher and threatening to overwhelm the banks. 

“Anne,” he says, and reaches a hand out blindly, feeling on the covers until he is able to intertwine his fingers with hers. “Anne, my love.”

The breath from the words stirs against her, and she is sobbing incomprehensible things to him, some of which may be his name.

He is her lodestone, guiding her path, and she is his truest love; they are one. He touches her with a sure hand and a loving mouth, and brings her safe through the storm. 

After, his mouth is wet when he kisses her, and she goes hot and cold all over once again. She knows the meaning of this smile of his now, and reads the desire in his eyes. “I am still a maid,” she says, “and yet – more.”

“Yes,” he agrees, and touches the curve of her breast where it is trying to escape her bodice. Truly gowns are not meant for rolling around in a man’s bed. 

“Do all men touch their wives so?” she asks, with rampant curiosity.

“I hardly know,” he says, laughing, “but I do not think so. It is their loss; you have never been more beautiful.”

Anne lies in the curve of his arm, and considers the afternoon. 

After a minute, she says, “I think I should like to do it to you.”

He chokes, pressing his face into the pillow, and Anne smiles, feeling her own wicked edge. 

“Take off your breeches, Frederick Wentworth,” she says, and laughs for the joy of it.

“Oh no,” he says, half-stifled, “you have to do it, wife.”

So Anne does.

~*~


End file.
